The Canary Islands are celebrating new record tourism figures after 711,968 foreign tourists visited the islands in June 2013, the highest number since 2001.

The increase represents an annual increase of nearly 21,000 visitors, and the highest number of registered in the month since 2001, when it reached 726,000 foreign visitors. The islands also managed to break a four year cycle by registering an increase of 7% in domestic tourism.

Domestic visitors accounted for 131,134 visitors to the islands, which is 8,211 more than the same month last year (June 2012). This is the first rise in National tourism since the beginning of the crisis in 2009 but, the islands have lost 82,000 domestic tourists so far this year (Jan-June 2012).

So far this year, the islands have received 5,009,472 foreign tourists, a rise of 0.6% (29,877 people) when compared to the same period last year. When you add domestic tourism to these figures, the negative percentage increases to 0.9% as the islands have received 5,600,000 tourists (51,000 less) from January to June 2013.

Regarding the first half of the year a total of 15.5 million passengers passed through Canarian airports in the first semester of 2013, which represents a 5.1% decrease when compared to figures from the same period last year (2012) according to figures published by AENA. From January to June 2013 there were a total of 143,693 operations, which also represents a decrease, of 12.1%, when compared to the same period last year. Seven of the eight airports in the Canary Islands saw passenger numbers drop with the exception of La Gomera, which experienced an increase of 7.1%.

Gran Canaria’s Gando airport lost 5.6% of passengers in the period of January – June 2013 totalling 4.6 million passengers, and 11.2% fewer operations (46,303). Followed by Tenerife’s South Airport, with a decrease of 0.5% of passengers (4.2 million passengers) with 4.6% fewer operations (27,354). Lanzarote ranked third with over 2.4 million passengers in the first six months of the year (1.5% less than in the same period in 2012) reducing its operations by 8.8%, with 20,640 takeoffs and landings.

Nationally, a total of 84.8 million passengers passed through AENA airports in Spain from January until June 2013, which is 5.9% less than last year. In this period there were 841,406 operations (-10.6%).